Louis Bayard, author of the novels Mr. Timothy and The Pale Blue Eye — both of which we proudly publish — writes in Salon about his time as a contestant on Jeopardy. He turns the experience into a meditation on knowledge-gathering as a form of play, and he also casts an eye toward Ken Jennings’ recent book.
The content of any given piece of knowledge is not necessarily what drives your average brainiac. He doesn’t learn the name of Superman’s father or the capital of Somalia or the author of “Daniel Deronda” because he wants to read George Eliot or fly to Mogadishu or ponder the implications of extraterrestrial life. He is acquiring facts in roughly the same way that Wilt Chamberlain acquired sex partners — and from roughly the same pleasure principle. Jennings speaks of “the endorphin rush, the I’m-smart feeling we get from unexpectedly producing an answer we had no idea we knew.” I remember the giddiness that shook my frame when I dredged up the name “Olof Palme” from deep in the well of my cultural memory. In moments like these, the knowledge is nowhere near as important as the sensation of knowing: the buzzing of axons and dendrites as they carry their precious cargo to its docking station.
